Managing Research Standards with Apps and Data availability

Research Management

Just as I steer through Research, a 3 step process necessarily,
1. Searching
2. Reading
3. Writing

I understand the challenges faced by fellow scholars at the very first step. The quality of research depends on the quality of information accesible to students and the analytics performed on existing research to decide their topic / area of research. Whitepapers, Projects, Lectures, Conferences, Seminars, Journals, Bibliographies, State-of-the-art presentations, etc., are part of the process and only enhance the knowledge, only vital requirement for quality research.

Should we not have access to all research papers, in a database, that connects topics and contents?

Researchers could validate the output, and testify the correctness of such automatically generated bibliography as part of their course work. In this way, Research Management is tackled well, as a social responsibility, avoiding horrrendous waste of effort in duplicate research, and irrelavant reading, that is occuring all across the globe.

I found Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) to be the best vehicle so far. Google Scholar is definitely competing, but not close enough to MAS. I just hope, I will be able to use the MAS API to import the long list of a 1900+ papers on to my desktop in an excel file, to be able to do a state of the art on Temporal Databases. It will be the best way for me to understand the area thoroughly, to test my hypothesis to be in -line with current research and industry requirements, or it to be obsolete / duplicate / tested and tried already! 

If I were asked to build an intelligent cralwer for research, I'd only say, I am far from it. Any researcher will quickly reckon with the need for the following -

1. Crawler / Bot - To create a list of papers, relevant publications from web-sites and search engines
2. PDF Management Software - Extract text from PDF files (abstract, Title, Author, citations, bibliography, etc., even if not part of metadata)
3. Document Management / Content Management Software (if the files included, are all not pdfs)
4. Database / DBMS - My SQL / XML / Excel or even a .dat file will suffice.
5. Reporting / Analytical Software - R / SAS / Excel ? - To present all possible information
6. Other Nice to have features - Mind Mapping software, BibTex Generator, PDF to word converter, Software for Image extraction from PDFs (they're usually part of a PDF Management software), Reference and Citation Manager, Notes Management software will be of great help.
7. Last but not the least, a giant Database like the MAS, with all the pre-work done regularly :) .. I know that is asking for too much, at the same time, it would also render research too easy and invaluable to the namesakers, if it weren't tasking us and demand that we read, which is a process only to generate high class research.

Books to help - Reading Statistics and Research by Schuyler Huck taht was available at our college library - the best resource you can find.

  

Monday, June 11, 2012

 

Resources for academic writing

The process of research involves perusing scores of publications, careful observation and presentation of results. While every phase is important, presenting research results and review writing could be a challenge, especially if you are new to academic writing. While I am sifting through this phase myself, I decided to document the process and efforts. Initially, I was unable to fix the key words as "academic writing", and searched for "Vocabulary for Research scholars", "words used in technical writing", "abstract nouns and verbs used in research publications", and finally, "words used in academic writing" !!

I could not pay complete attention to details, as I was primarily looking for a list of words and phrases. Nevertheless, I found the content interesting and leafed through complete articles, first few pages of many books. I also read through university resources that cover this topic, very carefully, and found the following resources, worth a second glance.

Reading Statistics and Research by Schuyler W. Huck is a book that I stumbled upon at my college library, during the initial few days of my course work. Ever since, this book has become an integral part of my research. I also have a copy of writing research papers that I found at a second hand book shop.

A list of resources that I found to be useful for academic writing and vocabulary are listed below. 

• Web based resources

1. Cornell University, offers valuable resources to students and research scholars across the globe.
2. A Glossary of Research Terms can also be useful. 
3. Academic Phrasebank by Manchester University has a practical solution. It offers a list of phrases categorized by the sections in which their use is appropriate (Example: There are phrases for describing methods, reporting results, etc.,)
4. UNC College of Arts and science has published a collection of Handouts, of which, Word Choice is an essential read. 
5. Unilearning offers a list of colloquial vocabulary and their formal alternatives 
6. Linking Words And Phrases 

• E-Books 
• English for Writing Research Papers by Adrian Wallwork

• Books

1.  Science Research Writing for Non-native Speakers of English by Hilary Glasman-Deal
2. Technical Writing By Alcantara R.D. et., al. is worth a read for the exercises included in it
   
   
   These are only a few listings and are a result of time bound resource identification, as I cannot afford too many hours to this activity. I took a screen shot of this post from a friend. 
   
   

   

   
   Happy Researching !!